Media Appearances

Podcasts, Articles, and Corporate Largesse

None. For obvious reasons.

The Week Ahead

On Monday, I’ll be producing an episode of The 9pm Edict podcast, and then celebrating in a private ceremony the Winter Solstice and the Full Moon. This will continue into Tuesday, because the Solstice itself is actually at 0834 AEST, well after the 0700 AEST sunrise.

The remainder of the week will see me in Sydney, working on the seemingly-endless tax compliance work, as well as the much-delayed geek-for-hire work. That’s enough for now, right?

I seem to have settled into semi-regular radio spots on ABC 774 Melbourne, talking about technology news roughly once a month. I did one of these on Thursday.

The main item was the legal battle between Apple and the FBI over an iPhone that belonged to one of the shooters in the San Bernardino shootings of December 2015. While there’s plenty of coverage of this case, I will mention that the FBI’s hack may never reach Apple, and the only winners are the shareholders of cybersecurity companies, because more people will see security as important.

The other item was the announcement on Thursday of the IOT Group’s new product, the ROAM-e drone for taking flying selfies. Yes, that’s what I said.

Heres the full 22-minute conversation with presenter Casey Bennetto, who was filling in for Lindy Burns.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I’ll be covering the APIdays conference for ZDNet, and catching up with friends in the evenings. On Thursday, I’ll be writing for ZDNet, and having a couple of work-related meetings, before catching VA859 MEL-SYD at 1600. I’ll probably return to Wentworth Falls that night.

Friday through Saturday? Well, that depends on my energy levels. But I hope to get that podcast done somewhere in there.

Further Ahead

The following week, I’ll be in Canberra from Monday 7 March for the Australian Internet Industry Association (AIIA) Navigating Privacy and Security Summit on Tuesday. I’ll probably stay in Canberra on Wednesday. Then on Sunday, I’ll be back in the Blue Mountains for Tech Leaders.

Last Sunday, Telstra gave free data to all its mobile customers in an attempt to make up for a major screw-up in the previous week. That triggered a conversation…

As a variety of news outlets reported, one guy managed to download more than 420GB of stuff. Telstra’s mobile network was reported to be pretty slow as many other selfish pigs pigged out.

On Wednesday, I told Vanessa Mills on ABC Kimberley in Western Australia how people could reduce their mobile data usage and increase their battery like. This is the resulting nine-minute conversation.

Operation Sovereign Borders, sinister and banal. Ditto for my reaction to Mick Kinley, acting chief executive officer of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) shrugging off concerns that Australia removes safety equipment from the lifeboats we put asylum seekers on before telling them to go home.

In the past I haven’t included the material I wrote elsewhere, for ZDNet Australia, Technology Spectator, CSO Online, Crikey, ABC The Drum and the rest. That’s all listed on my Media Output page. But this year I will highlight some of my personal favourites.

Media Appearances

Also on Friday, I was quoted — or rather, one of my tweets was quoted — in a story at the International Business Times, Thousands Of Australians Notice Giant UFOs. Perhaps they should’ve done a bit of fact-checking on this one.

Corporate Largesse

On Thursday, I went to the launch of the Microsoft Nokia Lumia 830 smartphone at Paramount House in Surry Hills, where I was of course given good canapés and wine. I also got a Lumia-branded tote bag containing a packet of Microsoft-branded jelly babies; a 2GB USB stick containing media information; and a loaner unit of the Lumia 830 itself. I’ll be using it over the next two weeks, and will report back at the end of that time.

Also on Thursday, I went to the Indies Party, the annual not-quite-Christmas party held jointly by the PR agencies Bass PR, Shuna Boyd PR, Einsteinz Communications, and Espresso Communications. There was food and drink aplenty.

The Week Ahead

The coming week is both busy and more structure than usual. That said, my schedule is always subject to last-minute changes — whether that’s down to the news cycle, cashflow glitches, or simply not caring any more. As usual, the daily plan tweets my be found on my voluminous Twitter feed.

Tuesday is a Sydney day. I plan to attend the Remembrance Day ceremonies in Martin Place, though that will depend on me getting a decent sleep the night before. Then there’s a lunch briefing with the Australian government’s CTO, John Sheridan, then coffee with a PR agency, then two events in the evening. Audible is launching something or other with the hashtag #ListenUp, and Chinese tech giant Huawei is launching their new smart device. That looks like rather a long day, so I plan to stay overnight in Sydney.

Wednesday should see a morning of writing, then a meeting with executives from Slovakian information security company ESET, and some time at AVAR, the 17th annual conference of the Association of Anti-Virus Asia Researchers, which ESET is organising this year.

That conference runs through to Friday, but I’m not sure how much of it I’ll be able to catch. I still have my usual column for ZDNet Australia to write on Thursday, and some administrivia to deal with on Friday, and I hope to get some other bits and pieces of writing done too.

The weekend is yet again unplanned, as seems to be the usual way lately. At least at this stage.

Update 10 November 2014: Edited to add a section for 5at5, which I’d forgotten.

The WireLurker malware that affects Apple’s iOS and OS X devices has been in the technical news this week. That caught Will Goodings’ eye, as did the Forbes list of the world’s 100 most powerful people. We chatted about both on Friday afternoon.

As for the Forbes list, Goodings was wanting to chat about Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page jointly holding the number nine spot. Which we did. But he also was interested in my suggestions.

For the most powerful Australian, I nominated the prime minister’s chief of staff Peta Credlin. “Nothing goes into the prime minister’s ear without her say-so, and nothing comes out of the government onto the media without her say-so,” I said.

Goodings then added his own comments, based on having see Credlin at work. It’s worth listening to. It starts at 15 minutes 27 seconds. I’ll also extract them for the next episode of The 9pm Edict.

I’ve also written a 2500-word feature on a security-related topic for ZDNet Australia that will be published some time in the coming week.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

On Tuesday, I went to a lunch hosted by NetSuite at Sydney’s Aria Restaurant, Circular Quay. As always, the food and wine was stunning. I had the oysters and the barramundi and the cheese. NetSuite also handed out a goodie bag, as is their tradition: another RuMe carry bag containing a Jawbone Mini Jambox wireless Bluetooth speaker; a bottle of Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz, which I shall save for later; and a NetSuite-branded notebook and pen.

The Week Ahead

There’s two broad themes for this week: clearing out more loose ends, and preparing to make some decisions about what I’ll be doing over the summer holiday season and into 2015.

Much as I love them, I’ve spent a bit too much time working on the podcasts The 9pm Edict and Corrupted Nerds — or rather, I haven’t got them generating enough revenue yet — which in turn has meant that I’ve been doing less paid writing, which in turn has led to less income. That’s caused problems. As usual, I’ve got too many different things happening, and I need to simplify the mix and get that revenue up.

So I’ll be addressing that this week — as well as some personal things that I won’t go into them here — or at least not in this post.

So with that in mind, and with the early part of the week a bit slow thanks to a certain horse race and its impact upon the national psyche, here’s how things will unfold.

Monday is mostly devoted to administrivia and clearing the communications backlog, but there’s a chance I might pop down from the Mountains to do a TV spot. I also plan to resurrect 5at5 — although you’ve heard that before, so take it with a grain of salt.

During the rest of the week, I’ll be producing an episode of The 9pm Edict, writing my regular ZDNet Australia column, and perhaps some other bits and pieces.

This week also sees the start of the Christmas party season — yes, I know it’s very early, but that’s how things work now — and there’s one I might go to in Sydney on Thursday night.

The weekend is unplanned, as seems to be the usual way lately.

[Photo:Breakfast Kangaroo, being chunks of kangaroo fillet marinated in lime juice, chilli and garlic, with steamed greens in oyster sauce on a bed of jasmine rice, photographed on 2 November 2014.]

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